Feb 22, 2015 – Winter Blooms

Transforming Ageist Thinking

Please Note: Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist. To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

We hear a version of the following every day: “I’m too old to change . . . to begin something new . . . to pursue a treasured dream.” The words may be ours, but our beliefs about aging are very much rooted in family and cultural beliefs. The over-the-hill syndrome is as toxic as any sexist remark and the sooner we relieve ourselves of the burden of belief in an inevitably medicalized old age, the happier and more productive and satisfied we’ll be. How do we age joyfully, energetically, passionately, courageously? Daily tapping can revolutionize our attitudes to aging, and, with psychologist Mario Martinez’s supportive research, help us to see ourselves as potentially successful centenarians instead of customers for adult diapers at seventy or eighty.

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Still Alice: A Look at Alzheimer’s Disease from the Inside

At the heart of the film Still Alice is Julianne Moore’s portrayal of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Told from the Linguistics Professor’s point of view, we see the world shrink and distort for her, as if she has boarded a tiny boat and is suddenly in the middle of the Atlantic. It is a terrifying story and an important one, not only because it explores the ravages of personhood that is Alzheimer’s, but also because it allows us to imagine the tremendous loss family members and friends bear in watching this wasting disease erode the loving, competent, insightful, and forgiving person they once knew. One thing I take issue with is the fictional story’s overworked irony of a linguistics professor losing her words; the true story of such a condition may be found in the film Iris, a biographical film acted with ravaging truth by Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent about the life and intellectual disintegration of Iris Murdoch, celebrated Irish philosophical novelist. This disease is horrifying because it robs its sufferers of the competence developed over a lifetime – whether one stays home with children, rises up the corporate ladder, makes one’s mark as an academic, or sells cars. Alzheimer’s robs its sufferers of meaning: how to use toothpaste . . . how to follow directions . . . how to find the way home from a familiar location and, eventually, . . . how to find the very meaning of home.

My husband and I touched hands frequently as we watched this film together. We both wept for the imaginary Alice and for the fraying of family life the disease causes. At the end, we remained seated, our fingers touching, our eyes moist. It is a mature person’s film and a young person’s film; it has a heart and a soul that is deep and tender because it expands our understanding of what it is to care for someone who is losing the self to this condition we call Alzheimer’s as well as our understanding of the person who is losing the self.

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Voicelessness and Sexual Assault

Last week, in the post on sexual assault’s afterlife, I touched on my grandmother’s vocal response to the event along with my own inability to make a sound during the assault. It is easy to assume a four-year-old child is unable to confront a sexual predator, but this is not always the case. Some children scream, cry, and fight physically, while others, like me, manifest sudden voicelessness and physical paralysis. This is the manifestation of the Freeze aspect of the the Fight, Flight, or Freeze Stress Response. During sudden trauma, we sometimes fight, we sometimes take flight, and, as happened to me, we sometimes freeze. Daily tapping, along with healthy sleep habits, eating habits, thinking habits, physical movement habits, meditation habits, and social habits, can build resilience into our lives that helps the Stress Response do the work it is meant to do – protect us from actual danger.

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After Sexual Assault

Of all the challenges I deal with personally and professionally, none requires more sensitivity than sexual assault. For most survivors just saying the term, or the more common word, rape, sets in motion a physiological chain reaction that often feels like someone’s fingers are probing around in our guts. In survivors, this subject can trigger feelings of threat, of vulnerability, of shame, and – at the same time – of agency, of empowerment, and of triumph. We can be terrified and in one and the same moment have the courage to speak out in order to honour our determination to heal and to support others in their healing. We can rage against those who would blame us for the criminal acts of others and at the same time be calm enough to speak our truth, end the silence around these vicious crimes, and create community with others who feel vulnerable and ashamed and at the same time empowered to speak out against sexual predation and its coverups.

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